Home. What does it look like? Is it a place, a person, a group of people? Is it multiple things to you?
I’ve been thinking a lot about home this week and the many things it means. I have an amazing first home full of my favorite things..my husband, kids, and it is beautiful and I am loved here and I love here.
I have an amazing second home. It is extended family, parents, siblings, in laws, nieces, nephews and all the beauty that comes from those people. They love us at our worst and accept us with all our faults.
I have an amazing third home. Friends who have become family. They are the people who come over when life is hard and text and call when you’re feeling down. They come to baseball games, go camping together, and love us with all our quirkiness.
This Easter I had to think of another home. Church has always been a huge part of my life and my husband’a life. Married to a pastor Easter was a big event with lots of celebration and full of people. This year’s Easter looks different to us. We don’t have that church and my husband doesn’t have to spend hours preparing for it, being there early and staying late. So what do we do this Easter? That has been the question.
I have found myself feeling bitter that we aren’t smack dab in the middle of the Easter celebration. We are displaced and on the outside looking in at whatever church we go. I have found myself sad at not knowing where to go and what to do. I have found myself digging deep. How much of my love for Easter was the “event?” How much of my life for Easter was the true joy of celebrating Jesus rising from the dead? I think in the past I loved them both but now, now I focus on what it truly means.
My home this Easter is taking Good Friday to fully reflect on the magnitude of what Jesus did for us. Fully understanding to the best of my ability those three words, “it is finished.” Taking Saturday to feel the emptiness that must have been felt the day between. And tomorrow celebrating the joy of Jesus rising. What a celebration.
Home at Easter isn’t a church. Home at Easter isn’t a church family. Home at Easter is rejoicing in my heart and praising my Savior for what has been accomplished.
So tomorrow I don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t know who I will be surrounded by. But I know where my home at Easter is. It is with my king. Just like it should be every other day.
